Today's telecommunications consumer has a variety of wireless and/or wired communications devices to choose from and multimedia applications for these devices. Some of the devices include and are not limited to the following list: notebook, laptop and larger personal computers, palm-size personal computers, wireless paging devices, pocket messaging devices, cellular telephones, World Wide Web access devices as small as palm-size to laptop-size devices and cordless telephones. One or more multimedia applications can run on these devices and most, if not all of these devices may be portable or mobile. That is, the user can change location and connect in a new location either via wired line or coaxial cable at a telecommunications or coaxial cable jack (optical fiber soon to come) of wireless local area networks or wire-line networks with number portability like 800-number free-phone or wireless connection to ground-based antenna or to orbiting satellites over channels from the lower to higher (lightwave/free-space optical) frequencies of the radio frequency spectrum. Yet despite the differences in media used to communicate and between multimedia applications, each device commonly communicates at least where it is, its identity (and, often, who is using it) and what it wants to do to some receiving functional entity in each of these applications and supporting protocols. The multimedia architectures on which these applications run include and are not limited to wireless LAN, wireless WAN, instant messaging networks, IP web searching networks and related services, IP telephony and switched telephony (voice and video) networks, both fixed and wireless among others. Today's consumer may take their wireless cell phone to Europe or Japan from the United States and expect full connectivity for multimedia applications, fly on a plane and expect to download a movie for watching on their personal computer, take an Internet voice/video or conventional switched circuit telephone call wherever they are, search the World Wide Web and transmit and receive instantaneous messages and associated documents or data as they walk, fly on a plane, travel in an automobile or on a boat or ride on a train.
Each of the applications that play on these mobile devices have developed differently with a different messaging protocol and different addressing schemes. It is well recognized, for example, that a mobile user of such devices, today, may have as many addresses and passwords as to be almost boundless, only limited by the imagination: one's telephone number, office telephone number, office e-mail address, home e-mail address, cell phone telephone number, pager number and so on with each connection often requiring their own personal identification number or other security access code. Some of the protocols developed on an international basis include, but are not limited to H.324 POTS video-conferencing, H.323 mobility protocol, H.320 ISDN video-conferencing and S.I.P. (Session Initiated Protocol), Presence/Instant Messaging (PIM) protocol, IMT 2000 among others too numerous to mention.
In my prior U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 09/642,142; 09/642,279, 09/642,298 filed Aug. 18, 2000 and Ser. No. 09/825,304 filed Apr. 4, 2001, a real-time mobility protocol, architecture and intelligent signaling scheme are introduced for real-time applications as well as functional elements introduced for interworking among protocols, all of which should be deemed to be incorporated by reference as to their entire subject matter.
Nevertheless, there are many mobile multimedia applications, as listed above, which may run independently and, permitted to develop unchecked, will cause to be built an immense infrastructure over time that can jeopardize the efficiency and speed of operation of the applications themselves. Many of the devices mentioned above are being developed to perform multiple applications and support multiple, different protocols. The manufacturers of such devices and supporting network equipment have competing interests with the managers of global networks in supporting terminal/device mobility, the former being desirous of building equipment and software for the complex architecture and the network being desirous of providing efficient speedy communications services in all mobile applications. Consequently, there is a need for a common mobility management protocol and functionality to handle the several existent, different multimedia applications.